Member of an internationally renown Hungarian filmmaking dynasty, Anna worked for over a decade in documentary film production in Europe and Latin-America. Her films have been broadcast on ARTE, ZDF, Odissea, Mezzo and Arts Channel Australia, screened at international festivals like Visions du Réel, Rhode Island IFF, É Tudo Verdade and BAFICI and won, amongst others, the FIPA D’Or and Film London Jury Mention awards.

Now based in London and mainly focusing on fiction, Anna is working with Christopher Sheppard at Adventure Pictures on a number of projects for writer/director Sally Potter also makes shorts and features as an independent producer.

Anna’s credits include the documentaries A Different Way (2008) and El destello (2011) by Uruguayan filmmaker Gabriel Szollosy, the UK-produced feature Forgotten Man by Canadian Arran Shearing (2015) and the Film London Special Jury Mention winner short film Little Soldier by Stella Corradi, with cinematography by Robbie Ryan (2015).

Anna is currently in development with a slate of features: an ambitious family film based on a book by Hungary’s eminent 20th century writer Magda Szabó; Sent, an action-romance by British novelist Rebecca Gowers; and a coming-of-age drama from director Tania Diez and scriptwriter Regina Moriarty.

Contact: anna.jancso@raindance.co.uk

Anji began her career as a producer of factual TV before moving into drama.  Her writing credits include an 8 x 50 minute comedy drama SINGLES for ZDF, a TV movie EMAIL TO GOD for PRO7 and a feature film LOVE SCENES FROM PLANET EARTH for SAMFILM. She wrote for BBC’s EASTENDERS for six years, also penning episodes of HOLBY CITY and DOCTORS, and five original plays for BBC RADIO 4.

In 2005, she storylined and co-wrote forty episodes of TASTE OF LIFE for BBC MEDIA ACTION in Cambodia and was the creator/show-runner of HOUSE OF MANY WINDOWS, a BBC MEDIA ACTION drama series set in Vietnam. 

While based in south-east Asia, Anji founded InDevelopment Productions (IDP) in order to produce original drama. Her international clients included BBC MEDIA ACTION, various AID AGENCIES & NGOs, and the philanthropist WARREN BUFFETT.

IDP is now UK-based. Anji is currently working with Berlin-based producer SILVANA SANTAMARIA (SOILFILMS) on a TV drama series TINDERBOX and the feature film GROWING UP IN PUBLIC. She is developing several other original projects for film and TV with BACK TO FRONT FILMS and with Executive Producer KELLY ASHTON (RED JOAN, THE SEAGULL).

Armughan Hassan’s experience of filmmaking is spread over 18 years. Before coming to direction he had been working professionally as a cinematographer and film editor that now provides an extra edge to his work. His international projects as cinematographer and editor have earned him acclaimed reviews from around the globe. For his work as cinematographer and editor on the feature film “Dukhtar” he was awarded with the fellowship of the reputable ifs labs New York in 2012.

After spending years in documentaries and Feature films, he recently have stepped into the main stream TV commercials and is associated with the well known production company “iDcreations” from where he have launched his directional career.

currently his first written and directed television season is announced with Sadia Jabbar Productions to be produced in spring of 2019.

Creative areas of interest 

Writing, storytelling, building characters specially strong female protagonists. experimenting with camera work, editing techniques for storytelling.

Mentoring strengths 

low budget filming, sensitive subjects and characters, working with actors and non actors, visual language, power of editing in production and pre-production.

Ben Gouldthorpe is a California-based writer and independent filmmaker whose work has garnered late-round attention from the Academy Nicholl Fellowship and Sundance Screenwriters Lab.  He holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts where he received the Charles Purpura Award for Excellence in Screenwriting and was recognized as a finalist for the Goldberg Playwriting Prize.  His recent projects include scripts for three independent features, the libretto for an off-Broadway musical theater collaboration, and a successful short film initiative to build a playground for underprivileged kids in New Orleans.

Creative areas of interest

Ben specializes in character-driven indie and prestige features with particular interests in bold drama, elevated genre, smart comedy, and social justice.  In addition to this, he has experience writing television pilots and playscripts.

Mentoring strengths 

Screenwriting, television writing, playwriting, story analysis, creative development

Charles Scott is an award winning producer/director with over 270 documentary and factual
television programs successfully completed. His production company has partnered with many
producers around the world and shot in over 50 countries with his programs airing on many major
broadcasters such as BBC, Five, NHK, CBC, CTV, Global, Discovery Channel, National
Geographic, PBS, Science Channel, Discovery Health. Charles has also produced and/or
directed hundreds of commercials, music videos, corporate videos, three feature films, children’s
shows and a daytime talk show. Chuck’s greatest strength is visual story telling, he and his team
craft a strong story arc for every work. They support the narrative with exceptional photography,
whether the story takes 15 seconds or 150 minutes to tell.

BA (Hons) Film & TV London College of Printing, MA in Film from Staffordshire University. Col is an award-winning writer/director who started in non-fiction at the BBC and now works primarily in fiction: writing and directing feature films for the cinema. He also runs his own documentary consultancy business www.thedocumentaryconsultant.com

Col started at the BBC directing various short comedy dramas series. He then went on to direct a number of highly distinctive, critically acclaimed documentaries for Channel 4 and BBC. These include: Just Enough Distance, Trouble At The House, Puccini Cappuccini, The Real Alan Clark, and The Lost Supper. 

Commercials he directed out of Ridley Scott Associates include Mars, AOL, Lea & Perrins and Snickers. 

He then wrote and directed the comedy short New Year’s Eve (starring Stephen Mangan & Keira Knightley) which won several prizes before being included in the feature compilation Stories of Lost Souls. 

His first feature as writer/director Someone Else (starring Stephen Mangan) was released in the UK in 2007 by Soda Pictures. It won various prizes including Variety Critics’ Choice at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. It’s been shown several times on BBC2 and is currently being distributed by the IFC and Sundance Channel in the US. Col’s second feature as writer/director, the relationship comedy Honeymooner (starring Gerard Kearns) was released in the UK by Soda Pictures and recently broadcast on BBC 1. He is currently in pre-production on his third feature, a US-set relationship comedy.

Creative Areas of Interest:

Documentary directing, microbudget feature filmmaking, writing & directing comedy films, writing & directing short films, documentary consulting, classical music, american indie cinema, mumblecore, the cinema of Woody Allen, Noah Baumbach, Sofia Coppola, Alexander Payne and Lena Dunham.

Mentoring Strengths

Directing documentaries, writing & directing microbudget feature films that an audience is likely to want to watch, short filmmaking, working with actors, casting, improvisation, directing comedy films.

Contact: col.spector@raindance.co.uk

Debs Paterson is an award-winning director and writer whose first feature Africa United was made by Pathé and BBC Films. Shot on location in Rwanda, Burundi and South Africa, the comedy-drama premièred at TIFF ’10 to a standing ovation and was a gala première at the London Film Festival before releasing theatrically nationwide and internationally.

Tutor Bio

Professor of screenwriting at the Academy of Arts, University of Novi Sad in Serbia teaching both graduate and postgraduate students. He holds a BFA/MFA in Film Directing, and a PhD in Film Studies from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts, University of Arts in Belgrade, Serbia. Since the mid-1990s, he wrote, directed and produced a dozen shorts and documentaries, including award winning: Balkan Blues (1998, Golden Medal of Belgrade at the Festival of Documentary and Short Films; Prix Europa, Berlin, official selection), and Shattered Dreams (2002, Special Jury Prize at the Festival of Documentary and Short Films in Belgrade; Special Jury Prize at the Golden Knight International Film Festival, Russia). He wrote and co-wrote a number of screenplays, including critically acclaimed feature film Huddersfield (co-writer, 2007) that won the National award for best screenplay and 2nd best screenplay award at the Film Screenplay Festival in Serbia, as well as Special mention at the Film and Art Festival Film Summer in Warsaw. He has worked as a writer/director in theatre, on radio, TV, and in advertising. Currently works on a textbook on screenwriting, still deals with the film criticism, and develops a couple feature screenplays. He is based between Montreal and Belgrade.

Creative areas of interest

History of cinema, contemporary cinema, film genre, dramaturgy, narrative theory, Classical Hollywood cinema, Hitchcock, SF, books about cinema, comic books

Mentoring strengths 

Writing (all kinds of fiction films), structure and the story analysis, cinephilia, a strong historical/theoretical background    

Contact: dejan.kraljacic@raindance.co.uk

Contact: emily.james@raindance.co.uk

Gideon van Eeden is a former television actor and theatre creator with South African roots. After emigrating to the Netherlands in 2008 he has worked as a festival programmer and filmmaker. His films have been selected by numerous Oscar- and BAFTA-qualifying festivals and have received more than 20 international awards. His short film Bijltjesdag (Day of Reckoning) has screened at more than 30 festivals around the world, and marks his debut as a director of narrative fiction. The film won Best Student Film at the Kerry International Film Festival in Ireland. His second short film, The Apricot Tree was selected for PöFF Shorts and nominated for Best Student Film at the Norwich Film Festival. Both productions were made as part of his studies in screenwriting and directing with the Raindance MA Programme, which he completed with distinction in 2018. His third film, God Glitch, is an award winning sci-fi short that screened at Film Quest and the Leeds International Film Festival. Next in the production pipeline is Entgen Luyten’s Executioner – a gritty historical thriller; green- lit by the Limburg Film Fund. He is in development with 3:42AM – a horror web-series and his first feature, a psychological horror: Darkness and Voices. 

Creative areas of interest

Socially relevant and reconciliatory themes, bigotry & hypocrisy, societies undergoing massive, sudden change, psychological & paranormal horror, sci-fi and fantasy, magical realism, (esoteric) symbolism, creating suspense with camera movement and musical score, aesthetic emotion, synchronicity, education- & redemption plots, coming of age stories, outdoors and nature, myth, occult, character motivation and psychology, popcorn flicks. Festival programming. David Fincher, Darren Aronofsky, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Jordan Peele.

Mentoring strengths

Script development: premise / character / theme, beat-sheets, rewrites, the shooting script. Short, feature and web-series structure. Indie- and guerrilla filmmaking: using limitations to your advantage. Visual design for new directors: directing the camera (movement, composition and blocking), vision statements, look books, sizzle reels, storyboarding and shot lists. Pitch-deck, (crowd-) funding, festival strategy, collaboration techniques: working with key crew and cast. Some hard lessons learnt the hard way – happy to share those practical gems.

Inka holds a BA in Film and Television Studies from Lahti University of Applied Sciences in Finland, as well as an MA in Documentary Film Directing from the National Film And Television School in the UK. She has  worked in film and TV industries for over a decade, with a focus in documentary storytelling and script writing.

With an international background and close ties to Germany and Russia, Jelena specialises in European co-productions and holds both a Masters degree in Film and TV Producing from the UK’s world famous National Film & Television School as well as a BA Honours degree in Arts from Central Saint Martins College. In 2010 Jelena founded Wostok, an independent London-based production company that specialises in development, financing and production of international film and documentary projects with focus on up-and-coming talent. In addition to producing several award-winning short films, Jelena has worked for the Berlin-based independent production company Amusement Park Films (A MOST WANTED MAN) and for the international production and sales company the Coproduction Office (PARADICE:LOVE).

I am a script consultant, a researcher and a lecturer in screenwriting, with 25 years of experience working in the British, American and Chinese film and TV industries.

I began my career assisting director Stanley Kubrick in the production of Eyes Wide Shut (1999). Next followed a stint working within the BBC’s ground-breaking Virtual Studios department, after which I took posts as a Visual Effects Technical Director and then VFX Producer for ESC Entertainment, a Warner Bros company. After assisting in the production of The Matrix Revolutions (2003), The Matrix Reloaded (2003), Catwoman (2004) and The Ladykillers (2004), I retrained in screenwriting at UCLA. I wrote two original TV series which were optioned and developed by the BBC and ITV, before founding my screenplay consultancy in 2006. Since then I have worked with hundreds of writers and producers across the world. In 2017, I was awarded a PhD for my research into forecasting a film’s box office from its narrative. 

Creative areas of interest 

I am interested in using psychological approaches towards the creation of compelling and believable characters; cross-cultural universals in film narratives and box office forecasting from the screenplay.

Mentoring strengths

As an experienced script consultant, my strengths are in understanding character, story and structure and how these work together to create emotionally engaging films.

Nominated for the Screen International Rising Horror Star Award Kate Shenton is a London based Writer and Director in the Horror Genre. Her feature film Egomaniac had its World Premiere Fright Fest and went onto screen at festival is all around the world including BIFFF and Dublin Horror. Egomaniac enjoyed a successful limited theatrical run in London which ended at The Prince Charles Cinema and is now available on iTunes, Amazon Prime and YouTube.

Her shorts film (Gimp, Bon Appetite and Send in the Clowns) have screen it over 80 International film festivals including Fright Fest, Raindance, Slamdance, BiFan and Encounters.  Recently she has released the first season of her web series NETFL!X AND KILL The pilot episode has reached over 10,000 views and she is currently working on Season Two.  She also had a number of television projects in development.

Contact: kate.shenton@raindance.co.uk

Kristina Leath-Malin is a filmmaker, scholar, screenwriter, and digital artist from Detroit, living in Brooklyn NY. She has recently completed her second and terminal graduate degree  (M.F.A.) at Long Island University  in Media Studies with her work MY FINAL GIRL: THE BLACK WOMEN OF AMERICAN HORROR, and first began her graduate voyage in FEMINIST HORROR THEORY with her M.A. published thesis (turned book) OBJECTIFICATION REPACKAGED: THE WOMEN OF 21^ST CENTURY FRENCH HORROR. She is also a post-9/11 New York artist (theater and opera performer turned filmmaker) who worked in tower 1 on the 107th floor until that fateful day.  After, she traveled through Europe with a performance group and landed in Paris, where she began writing.  Scripting and having ideas inspired her to return to graduate school, after making several short films and wanting to truly understand the mechanics of meaning in cinema. In addition to her film efforts, she has curated 4 (shown in 7) multimedia art exhibitions in New York City. Currently, she is building her internet research and information database MY FINAL GIRL and (after being granted contractual usage) is in post-production with her feminist take on the Stephen King “Dollar Baby” ONE FOR THE ROAD (the sequel to Salem’s Lot). Her next project will be based on the mythology of Lillith, the first wife of Adam.

Contact: kristina.leath-malin@raindance.co.uk

Lukasz’s documentaries have played at festivals, such as Hot Docs, Camerimage, Visions du Reel and SXSW. His film ‘After’ won the CILECT Best Documentary film award, which is chosen by the association of the world’s major film and television schools. He regularly films in Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and the US.

As part of the Raindance mentor team for 7 years, Lukasz specialises in project development: from an idea to treatment writing, pitching and shooting a trailer – creative storytelling, visual language, and international co-productions.

Currently splitting his time between Tel Aviv, where he works as a cinematographer on documentaries produced by one of the Israelis top production companies, Heymann Brothers Films; and Denmark where he is currently directing two feature length films with Made in Copenhagen.

Lukasz has a Master Degree in Documentary Film Directing from the UK’s National Film and Television School (NFTS) and an MA in sociology from the University of Warsaw, Poland.

Contact: lukasz.konopa@raindance.co.uk 

Øyvind Aamli is a Norwegian film director with a focus on character-led creative documentaries. His 18-year career as a songwriter, producer and filmmaker spans across TV, film and music both commercially (Netflix, BBC, ITV, A+E, BSkyB, Universal, Sony, Athlete, Snow Patrol etc.) as well as the charity/non-profit sector (PramDepot, Collage Arts, Anchor Project, Insightful Families)).

Øyvind has recently completed a Postgraduate / Master degree in Film Studies with Raindance at De Montford University. Over the last 5 years he has been developing his voice as a documentary writer and director through films about belonging, autism and the refugee crisis in Europe. He is currently developing his first documentary feature in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

His previous films have been screened at festivals in the UK, Europe and USA. Øyvind has also curated film festivals including Asylum in Focus and Stella Polaris Short film Festival.

Filmography

Being Someone Else / 2020 / Writer, Director, Producer

Through Exile / 2018 / Writer, Director, Producer

Belonging / 2017 /  Writer, Director, Producer

The Chocolate Factory / 2016 / Writer, Director, Producer, Composer

Contact 

Øyvind Aamli – E-mail: oyvind.aamli@raindance.ac.uk

Ruth Paxton is a filmmaker named in Canongate’s FUTURE 40, a list of storytellers anticipated to dominate the next 40 years of creative life in Scotland. In 2019 Screen Daily featured her as one of ‘Six emerging Scotland based Directors you need to know.’ Her award-winning short films have been exhibited and nominated in competition at numerous international events and prominent film festivals. Short drama PARIS/SEXY won the UK Film Council’s award for Best British Short at the 2011 London Short Film Festival and Paxton won Best Woman Director at the same festival in 2015 for her film, PULSE.

Paxton is alumnus of a number of labs and development programmes, including Guiding Lights 8, the UK’s most prestigious professional mentoring scheme. She was selected for BFI NETWORK’s development programme during London Film Festival 2017, and has been participant of the Toronto Talent Lab, EIFF Talent Lab, Wellcome Trust’s Ideas Lab, CPH:PIX Sessions, British Council’s Film and Music Archive Lab in association with PRS for Music Foundation, BFI and Manchester’s HOME, and also jury member at Ukraine’s Wiz-Art International Short Film Festival. In 2014 Paxton was Artist in Residence at the Cucalorus Film Foundation in NC, USA.

Other commissions include BAROQUE for Milan’s Festival Delle Lettere, ROCKHAVEN for the Royal Philharmonic Society and NEVADA, commissioned and featuring music by folk trio, LAU. Ruth recently directed the performance element of a 360VR piece with producer Ashley McPherson and BBC Scotland, viscerally examining the nature of anxiety. And completed production of her new short horror BE STILL MY BEATING HEART starring Maxine Peake, commissioned for production via BBC Films and SFTN, produced by BFI Vision Award recipients barry crerar with whom she is developing her feature, THE FLAMING HEART with script development finance from BBC Films. BE STILL MY BEATING HEART had its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival 2019 and was nominated for Best British Short at London Short Film Festival 2020.

Ruth is currently attached to direct an untitled feature project set in Portland, Oregon with producer Linda Reisman (USA) and British writer Deborah Haywood inspired by Peter Rock’s novel, KLICKITAT. With script development and director support financed by Film Four.

She is currently in pre-production on a horror feature, A BANQUET, written by Justin Bull and produced by Leonora Darby, James Harris and Mark Lane of Tea Shop. The script has just won the Filmaka prize for best screenplay, in conjunction with Riverstone films and will begin principal photography in May 2020.

Ruth has directed two blocks of BBC Continuing Drama RIVER CITY, comprising four episodes in total. She is a professional mentor with Raindance’s International MA film students and Associate Lecturer at Screen Academy Scotland working. She makes commercial content with leading Scottish company, Mallinson Television Productions, and is represented by Mark Casarotto of Casarotto Ramsay & Associates.

Creative areas of interest

Psychologial Horror + Mental Health Issues + Psychosexual and Romantic Drama + Fables, Mythology, Legends, Fairytales, Folklore + Death Awareness + Vanitas Theme + Renaissance and Baroque Art + Surrealism + Marilyn Monroe and Hollywood’s Golden Era + Crime Scene Photography + Editorial Fashion + Interior Design + Gothica + Storytelling therapy + Classic Gangster Genre + Cinematic Television + Francis Ford Coppola, Yorgos Lanthimos, Jonathan Glazer, Jane Campion, Jacques Audiard, Cate Shortland

Mentoring strengths

+ Across Short and Feature filmmaking (drama / experimental / music)

Development:

*Seed Idea, Character and Story development

*Packaging (Supporting Documents, STORY & LOOK BOOKS)

*Pitching

Production:

*Visual Storytelling + Production Design

*Casting, Rehearsal, Working with actors

Contact: ruth.paxton@raindance.co.uk

Born in São Paulo, Samantha moved to London to pursue a career in cinema. Her early works in Brazil include a script collaboration with Uruguayan feature director, Mauro Baptista, and with the script-writing team on Fernando Meirelles’s ‘City of Men’. In London, Samantha has been involved in experimental and mainstream documentaries and dramas, including Phyllida Lloyd’s ‘The Iron Lady’, Kevin Macdonald’s ‘Life in a Day‘ and ‘Marley‘ and Stephen Frear’s ‘Lay the Favourite’. She has also worked on TV pieces such as BBC3‘s TV series ‘Some Girls’ and Sky Art’s drama ‘Walking the dogs’. Her collaboration with Italian Artist Valentina Lari resulted in the experimental film ‘The Deformity of Beauty’, shot at ‘The Mütter Museum’ (Philadelphia, USA) and awarded best experimental short film at the Amsterdam Film Festival. Graduated in Journalism with post graduation in Semiotics and MA in Film and TV Theory, Samantha’s present interests include scriptwriting, editing, postmodernism, pshychoanalitic film theory and femininity in cinema. Her approach to teaching is one that aims the full development of the student: improvement of the critical thinking, encouragement of the creative potential, and conceptual learning through practical experience.

Contact: samantha.brockhausen@raindance.co.uk

A graduate in European Business Administration, Stephan Mallmann has extensive experience in film production and sales, in Germany and the UK. In 1989 he started out in a business affairs capacity at Recorded Releasing, a London based distribution and sales company for high quality arthouse films (Wings of Desire, Withnail & I etc.).

Stephan subsequently served as Financial Controller at Constantin Film in Munich, one of Europe’s leading film production, distribution and exhibition companies.

In January 1994 he joined Recorded Picture Company in London (The Last Emperor, Sexy Beast, among numerous others), and by 1996 had become a director of the company. In 1998 he worked on the launch of RPC’s sister company, the sales agency Hanway Films (Carol, Brooklyn and hundreds more), of which he is a founding shareholder. In 2001 he was appointed COO of both RPC and Hanway.

During his almost 20 year tenure, he handled the financial structuring of many of RPC’s and HanWay’s projects, including David Mackenzie’s Young Adam, David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method, Wim Wenders’ Pina or Roenning & Sandberg’s Kon-Tiki (the latter two films were Oscar-nominated).

In 2012 he stepped down from his day-to-day roles in RPC/Hanway, and moved back to Germany, as an independent consultant. He retains close links to the group. His most recent credits as an independent producer are on Wim Wenders’ Submergence, Marcus Rosenmüller’s Trautmann and Rupert Everett’s The Happy Prince.

Full credit list on http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1040781/

Creative areas of interest

Stephan’s professional focus is on high-end auteur films (Wenders, Cronenberg etc.), a speciality of RPC and Hanway, and something that is continuing in his independent career. A key relationship is with Wim Wenders, on five of whose films Stephan acted as a producer.

Stephan’s experience as to genre is very broad, mostly quality drama, but also documentaries (Pina, Glastonbury etc.), and even children’s animation (Impy’s Island, Happy Family (aka Monster Family), or the upcoming Monster Family 2). 

Mentoring strengths

Best suited for budding producers, directors and writers, which already have a modicum of experience.

Stephan’s key background is in production (not “on set” line production, but development, finance and legal structuring), but due to his work in the management team of a major sales agency, Stephan has a good “feel” for what the international market wants, and an eye for good screenwriting.

Originally from France, Stéphanie holds a Masters in Business from Audencia Nantes. She began her career in story development at TF1 International and Canal Plus, worked as a story editor on TF1 animated series such as Emmy-nominated Pet Aliens, wrote live-action TV scripts, created a Sci-Fi animated series for Luc Besson’s EuropaCorp for Canal Plus: Valerian & Laureline based on the comics. After directing short films in France she moved to Los Angeles to study filmmaking at UCLA, graduated in 2008 then set up a UK-based production company Frenzy Films with fellow UCLA alumnus Sean McConville. She wrote, directed and produced her first feature The Quiet Hour starring Dakota Blue Richards and Karl Davies which premiered at Galway Film Fleadh, was nominated for Best British Film at Raindance, Best International Film at Sofia Film Festival, won Best Feature at Kansas City Filmfest, showcased at Newport Beach, premiered on Sky Cinema in the UK in 2016, and sold to multiple territories including the U.S. She is currently pre- producing Sean McConville’s upcoming thriller The Last Moon and developing her sophomore film, Ice, a contained science-driven sci-fi thriller, which was selected for the 2019 JETS Co-Production Initiative during Berlinale where it was voted Best UK Project. ICE was also one of 6 projects selected as part of the Second Film section of the 2020 Sofia Meetings Co-production market during the Sofia International Film Festival and has made the Top 50 in the 2020 ISA Fast Track Fellowship Competition in the U.S. She is an alumna of Berlinale Talents and IFP Emerging Narrative in NYC. 

Tom Wood began his film career working at London-based Autonomous for producer Cat Villiers in 2007 and worked on a variety of projects including as Associate Producer on Duncan Ward’s BOOGIE WOOGIE (starring Danny Huston, Amanda Seyfried and Stellan Skarsgård). Tom also worked in development on a number of films including CIRKUS COLUMBIA (Bosnian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 83^rd Academy Awards). Tom then joined Wellington Films as development producer in autumn 2009. His work with Wellington also included as production manager on a feature documentary – A MAN’S STORY. Alongside his work in development with Wellington, Tom has produced a number of short films for the company. Between autumn 2013 and spring 2015, Tom worked with producers Embargo Films, including as development producer on Catherine Hardwicke’s MISS YOU ALREADY. Now working as a producer for Wellington Films, Tom is developing Ruth Paxton’s debut feature film A HYMN FOR MARS, which has been supported in development by Creative Scotland and the Scottish Film Talent Network. Tom’s ambitions as a producer are to develop projects from diverse and singular writers and directors, films which have a sense of scale in storytelling, which understand their audiences, and which say something about the world that we live in.

Viktoria is a film director, scriptwriter, psychotherapist and intensive care doctor. In reverse chronological order.
Her past professions helped her develop a diagnostic capability that penetrates the surface and an understanding of deep human emotions.

Built on her previous two degrees (Doctor of Medicine and MA in Psychology), Viktoria completed her MA in screenplay writing and directing at Staffordshire University in 2019.
Her short films, Pintu (2016), Butterfly Daughter (2018), Metaphorms (2019), U up? (2020) were internationally screened awarded. Her latest work, Dividing Line (2021), is in post-production.

Viktoria started to work with Raindance Film School in its MA programme in 2020.

Mentoring areas of expertise:

WRITING
idea development – the basics of storytelling
character development
characters with psychological conditions
crafting synopsis, treatment and script
writing dialogue

DIRECTING
breaking down the script
creating a strong visual world – working with the cinematographer
bringing the best performances out – working with the actors
collaboration with the crew
retelling the story in cuts – working with the editor
strengthening the story with sound or silence – working with the sound designer and composer

Wendy Rowland is an award-winning director and editor whose documentary films have received critical acclaim. She has a special interest in women’s health and most recently in documenting patient experience through illness and at end of life.  Wendy’s credits include: Living Forever (CBC, The Nature of Things), Bloodlines (CTV), Jailhouse Romance (CBC), Raising Rover (CTV), The Prom (TVO) and Packing Heat (NFB). For the past few years she has been creating innovative web-docs for the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer, the Canadian Virtual Hospice, Ovarian Cancer Canada and the Heart & Stroke Foundation. Wendy began her career working with Michael Moore, Ron Mann and editor/director Wendey Stanzler.  She is an alumnus of the NFB’s prestigious Fast Forward program, received her MA in Cinema Studies from NYU and her BAH from Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario.

 In 2003 Zack joined the production team at NDF International, one of the UK’s most successful independent production and financing companies with sixteen Oscar nominations to its credit, working on a wide range of NDF’s development projects including Franco Zeffirelli’s ‘The Florentines’.